How do I disable The Just in Time Debugger?

Question

Just provisioned a new server running IIS and Server 2012 and SQL Server 2012. I also installed SQL Server Management Studio tool so I can quickly inspect databases without the need to open a remote connection.

When I browse an ASP.NET sites remotely, I get a Just-in-time debgugger exception dialog when an error is encountered in addition to the yellow screen. The dialog stays up on the server and piles up unless I RDP and manually close all the dialog boxes.

The only way to disable this is by removing Visual Studio Shell 2010 (integrated) using the control panel. The side effect is that I can no longer use SSMS.

Most of the available solutions are outdated or don't work. The registry settings are no longer applicable and most articles concerning this issue are old. Microsoft's official documentation is a rat's nest of broken links. Moreover, many users are confusing IE's script debugging dialog with this issue. Although they are related and similar, this specific issue is tied to Visual Studio's runtime environment.

Any ideas?

ASIDE: I can't believe Microsoft has this "feature" on a product that is installed on a production server. I am just floored by the incompetence of a multi-billion dollar corporation. I've seen my question asked since at least since 2005 with no official solution that works. I just have to ask one last time for sanity checking. I want to make sure I'm not the one who is "thick" in the head here.

Answer 1

To disable Just-In-Time debugging by editing the registry

In the Start menu, click Run. In the Run dialog box, type regedit, then click OK. In the Registry Editor window, locate and delete the follow registry keys:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AeDebug\Debugger
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\.NETFramework\DbgManagedDebugger

If your computer is running a 64-bit operating system, delete the following registry keys also:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\AeDebug\Debugger
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\.NETFramework\DbgManagedDebugger

Take care not to accidentally delete or change any other registry keys.

Instead of deleting it, you can also just (temporarily) rename the AeDebug key for the bitness of your choice to something else, e.g. AeDebug-disable!